$match(<pattern> <word list>)

• If the <pattern> argument is omitted the empty string is returned.
• <word list> contains zero or more space separated “extended words”
• Each word in <word list> is taken as literal text, and each are matched against <pattern>.
• If none of the words in <word list> are matched by <pattern>, then the return value of match is 0 (zero).
• Otherwise, the return value is the index of the first word in <word list> that is matched by <pattern>, COUNTING FROM ONE, AND NOT COUNTING FROM ZERO.
• It is important to remember that other word functions, such as $word() count from zero. You must subtract one from the return value of this function before you can use it in some other functions.
• If <pattern> does not contain any wildcards, you should use the $findw() function instead.
• If <word list> contains only one word, you should use the =~ operator instead.

This function can be used to match a pattern against a list of words to see if any of them match. Since ircII does not include the =~ operator, this was the standard way to do pattern matching of one pattern to one string in scripts. Also, since ircII does not include the findw function, this was the standard way to determine if a literal word was present in a literal word list. In many cases, the match function has been superseded by other functions that do the job better.

 0   no matches found
>0   index to first match in list -- counting from one!

$match(*oo* blah foo booya)                              returns 2
$match(*oo* blah fubar erf)                              returns 0

This function first appeared in ircII-2.1.5